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Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh each of electricity during 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research has claimed.

Analysis by Michael Thomas, shared on X, claims both Google and Microsoft consumed the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has an estimated GDP of $78.7 billion. Googles 2023 revenue stood at $307.4 billion, and Microsofts at $211.9 billion.

The massive energy usage underscores the substantial environmental impact of these companies. But it also serves as a reminder of their sheer scale, and the positive impact they could have an leading more sustainable initiatives.

Iceland, Ghana, the Dominican Republic and Tunisia each consumed 19 TWh, while Jordan consumed 20 TWh, highlighting the two tech firms immense scale. Libya (25 TWh) and Slovakia (26 TWh) consumed slightly more power.

The comparison between entire countries and two single companies highlights the colossal energy requirements of Big Tech. The consumption also alludes to the environmental impacts of data centers, which are used to power cloud services including storage and compute, as well as a new generation of artificial intelligence.

The significant electricity consumption of these companies calls for ongoing discussions around sustainability and renewable energy adoption. Both Google and Microsoft have carbon-free or carbon-negative pledges by the end of the decade, and investments in cleaner energies and energy matching have already scaled up considerably.

With a market cap of $2.294 trillion and $3.372 trillion respectively, Google and Microsoft currently stand as the worlds fourth and second-most valuable companies. With the scale of their operations more akin to an entire nation, all eyes are on them as the worlds economies continue to prevent and reverse environmental damage.

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Google and Microsoft now each consume more power than some fairly big countries - TechRadar

Googles European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images

Ireland, despite its small land size and population, is among the wealthiest countries in the world. The island nation boasted aGDP per capita of $104,270 in 2023, according to the IMF, next only to Luxembourg and higher than the U.S., Switzerland, Singapore and Norway. It is also one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with its GDP growing15.1 percent and 9.1 percent in 2023 and 2022, respectively.

Irelands journey from the devastation of the Great Famine, which claimed at least a million lives between 1845 and 1852, to its struggle as one of the poorest nations in Europe after part of the island gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1922 was marked by significant challenges, including mass emigration to the U.S. and neighboring countries. Before the 1840s, the Emerald Isle was home to approximately 8.2 million people, a population level yet to recover fully.

In the 20th century, Irish leaders began implementing pro-business policies to jump-start its economy. The country established the worlds first trade zone outside its small international import in 1959, attracting international businesses to build manufacturing plants. Dubbed the Shannon Free Trade Zone, corporations were allowed to avoid taxes by building in Ireland and hiring local workers. The country also created a business environment marked by low taxes and lax regulation, which included the controversial tax loophole known as Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich.

Apple (AAPL) wasamong the first to take advantage of the loophole, opening its first non-U.S. office in Ireland in1980. Dozens of tech and pharmaceutical companies followed suit, fueling job creation and economic growth. From 1995 to 2005, Irelands annual GDP growth averaged a remarkable9.4 percent, earning the country the nickname Celtic Tiger.

The Shannon Free Trade Zone ended in 2003, and the E.U. forced an end to the Double Irish tax loophole in 2015. Nevertheless, Ireland has established itself as a hub for U.S. companies looking to expand to European markets, so the momentum continues: in 2023, 167 U.S. companies opened offices in Ireland.

Ireland still has one of Europes lowest corporate tax rates, at 12.5 percent, much lower than the 21 percent corporate tax rate in the U.S. and is the only English-speaking country remaining in the E.U. after Brexit. The Irish government is seeking to raise the corporate tax rateto 15 percentfor some large companies, but the appeal remains.Google (GOOGL) and other tech firms are here for one reason, and its taxes, a Google financial analyst based in Dublin told Observer anonymously.

American tech giants play an outsized role in Irelands economy. Some60 percent of Irelands corporate tax revenue comes from just 10 U.S. companies, according to the Irish Tax and Customs department.

However, the Irish government has called GDP a poor way to measure its economy. GDP is the sum of government expenditures, consumer and private consumption, net exports, and investment. In Ireland, however, the latter two measures are highly distorted by multinational corporations operating in the country.

For example,Apple claims iPhones are exported from Ireland for accounting purposeswhen they are actually designed in the U.S. and primarily manufactured in Asia. Thus, iPhone sales accounted for aquarter of Irish GDP growth in 2018but hardly brought any money into the country. The Irish Tax Institute finds that85 percent of Irelands exports come from foreign-owned companies.

Investments in Ireland are also distorted: an IMF study found thattwo-thirds of investments made in the country are phantom,meaning they pass through empty corporate shells with no benefit to the actual economy.

To better understand its economy, the Irish government uses gross national income (GNI) and modified domestic demand (MDD), which factor out much of the distortion from international corporations. When measured by GNI and MDD, Ireland is far from being a wealthy, fast-growing nation but an economy that has grown slowly over the last decade.

Irelands economic story underscores the limitations of GDP in measuring a countrys true wealth. While multinational investments have propelled Ireland to the top of the GDP charts, the average Irish citizen faces a different reality.

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US Big Tech Companies Complicated Role in Irelands Booming Economy - Observer

While still working in the final stage of HBM3e qualification with NVIDIA, Samsung Electronics is also advancing in the AI memory market with custom high bandwidth memory (HBM) solutions. According to reports by PassionateGeekz and China Flash Market, the memory giant is collaborating with major clients, such as AMD and Apple, to develop tailored HBM products, which are expected to be commercially available in the era of HBM4.

Citing Choi Jang-seok, head of Samsungs new business planning team at memory division, the reports note that many customers of Samsung are switching from traditional, general HBM to customized products, as the latter promises better performance, power and area (PPA), while offering greater value than current options.

PassionateGeekz notes that at the Samsung Foundry Forum 2024 earlier this week, Choi further highlighted two forms of customized HBM Samsung has been developing. It is worth noting that Samsung is developing a large-capacity HBM4 memory with a single stack capacity of 48GB, which is expected to enter production in 2025.

On the other hand, Samsung also illustrated the innovation of the 3D stacking of HBM DRAM and customer-specific logic chips. By bypassing the interposer and base die required in the existing 2.5D packaging solution, the HBM chip can be directly integrated into the computing SoC in 3D. Samsungs custom HBM, therefore, by eliminating intermediaries and substrates, can significantly reduce power and area.

TrendForce also observed that for HBM4, standard processes and capacities have been settled. The three major suppliers are in the development stage, with each buyer initiating custom requests. For future generations of HBM, new directions have been proposed, as HBM may no longer be just arranged next to the SoC main chip but could also stack directly on top of it.

While all the options are still under feasibility discussion and not finalized, TrendForce believes the future HBM industry will shift towards more customized production. Compared to other DRAM products, this approach aims to break away from the framework of commodity DRAM in terms of pricing and design, offering more specialized solutions.

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(Photo credit: Samsung)

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[News] Samsung Develops Custom HBM with Tech Giants, with Commercialization Expected in HBM4 - TrendForce

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UN US Tech Giants Combatting Synthetic Drugs - Winchester Herald Chronicle

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Today's consumers have ever-changing preferences, relentless pursuit of satisfaction and rising demand for high-quality as well as diverse products. This creates a dynamic challenge for marketers: developing innovative strategies to reach a constantly evolving target audience. While identifying the "ideal" customer and optimizing campaigns within budget were once formidable tasks, artificial intelligence has transformed the marketing landscape. Thanks to its ability to harness vast amounts of data and uncover hidden patterns in consumer behavior and cognition, AI has equipped marketers with the tools to decipher the mysteries of their target audience.

But where did it all begin? The early 2010s witnessed a turning point in advertising. As machine learning and big data matured, they became powerful tools within reach for marketers. This confluence sparked the automation of ad buying and the emergence of precise targeting ad campaigns. Such a transformation stemmed from the digital revolution, particularly the rise of streaming TV (CTV).

Before CTV, traditional television relied on program ratings a blunt instrument for determining the right audience. CTV, coupled with neural networks, revolutionized targeting from a different perspective, with the main factor in choosing potential customers becoming their characteristics, such as habits, preferences and location. In particular, cutting-edge technology empowers advertisers to craft effective strategies and optimize them in real time, adapting to the evolving needs of their audience. This capability, in turn, provides advertisers with the necessary reach and makes the campaign as effective as possible.

Over time, the functionality of AI in the field of advertising has expanded, and today, it is successfully used for tasks such as:

Automated advertising campaigns: The technology independently analyzes advertising rates on various platforms and determines the budget and target audience based on the client's needs and capabilities.

Hyper-personalized advertising: AI analyzes a large amount of information about users (gender, age, geolocation and preferences, among other characteristics) and allows an ad to be shown only to those interested in the product. This ensures a high level of accuracy and resonance with the potential audience.

The development of programmatic advertising: Neural networks enable the production of higher-quality content tailored to regional, linguistic, and cultural differences, among other factors. This means that ads can be more relevant and engaging to users, leading to better results for advertisers. Neural networks are also improving the decision-making processes of programmatic advertising, such as targeting and fraud prevention. For example, neural networks can be used to identify fake clicks and views, which can help protect advertisers from wasting their budgets.

Forecasting, monitoring, and optimization: AI forecasts allow to project outcomes, optimize parameters and track real-time performance metrics, enabling data-driven adjustments for a constantly improving campaign.

Contextual advertising: The technology can interpret the viewer watching's content, genre, and even tone.

Related: 6 Positive Impacts of Artificial Intelligence on Digital Marketing

Tech giants like Google are leading the charge in automated advertising campaigns, where AI handles the entire process from targeting the right audience and crafting compelling ad creatives to summarizing overall campaign performance. Google's arsenal of AI tools includes Smart Bidding, which analyzes online auctions to determine the optimal bid price based on conversions or cost-per-acquisition. Similarly, their innovative Generative AI within Performance Max creates unique illustrations based on user requests and can edit existing visuals. Thus, it becomes easier and, most importantly, faster for marketing and advertising specialists to develop personalized ad concepts and scale them effortlessly across campaigns.

Other exciting players who are also developing the use of AI in AdTech include:

Meta is testing a feature that automatically generates Facebook ads. The technology will develop different versions of texts, create images on request and edit them to the required parameters. This will allow advertisers to save time and resources, as well as improve the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

Amazon's AI personalizes ad images to resonate with individual consumers, boosting engagement and ad effectiveness. The combined power of Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Rekognition fuels data-driven marketing campaigns, enabling room for insightful analysis and optimization. Thus, marketers can proactively combat ad fraud within their campaigns, ensuring the budget reaches real customers.

IBM utilizes the AI assistant IBM Watson to set up advertising. Watson searches for potential customers, engages in dialogue with them, identifies their interests and preferences, and selects relevant content based on these insights.

Netflix uses artificial intelligence to analyze users' viewing history and recommend what to watch next.

Movable Ink leverages AI to create personalized marketing experiences across email, mobile and other channels. Their technology tailors content based on individual customer behavior for more engaging interactions.

Spectrum (communication services), thanks to AI, creates high-quality videos for customers with the characteristics of their brand in just a few minutes.

Global corporations are wielding AI to revolutionize advertising and marketing. These technologies streamline campaign processes, personalize experiences at scale, optimize ad delivery and even inject creativity through AI-powered AdTech. As a result, projects become more impactful, making AI-driven marketing accessible to companies of all sizes, not just tech giants. But this raises a question: Does this dominance by big players stifle innovation, and can startups still compete in the online marketing landscape? Let's take a look!

Related: 5 AI Marketing Tools Every Startup Should Know About

In today's crowded marketplace, capturing consumer attention requires more than just amazement. People crave authenticity and experiences that resonate with their values and needs. Here are some of the most effective advertising strategies startups can leverage:

Target niche markets and industry verticals: By focusing on specific sectors, individuals can identify the exact problems your services solve.

Speed and adaptability: Advertisers need partners to keep pace in a dynamic marketing landscape. That's where agility comes into the picture. Startups are known for their responsiveness to external market shifts and internal adjustments. They can pivot strategies and embrace new technologies faster than larger, more established agencies.

Personalized approach: A unique solution tailored to the customer's needs and capabilities will set startups apart from large companies that regularly offer generic projects and allow them to build long-term relationships with advertisers.

Examples of companies that apply the strategies mentioned above in AdTech:

Socure offers an AI-powered platform for identity verification, document authentication and fraud detection and prediction. The platform can analyze natural language content to identify negative information about a person of interest.

IAS is revolutionizing ad performance with its AI-powered MFA detection and avoidance technology. This innovation helps advertisers avoid low-quality, ad-stuffed sites notorious for delivering poor results. By avoiding these sites, advertisers can expect significant reductions in ad costs and a substantial boost in return on investment.

Adwerx leverages AI to create personalized and scalable advertising campaigns for businesses in financial services, asset management and real estate.

Qwarry delivers impactful advertising that reaches the right audience, all without relying on personal information.

Ogury stands out for its personalized solutions that prioritize privacy. The company does not use website visitor information; instead, it employs AI to develop profiles of potential audiences.

The success of these startups proves that even against tech giants, smaller companies can carve out a niche, become trusted partners for advertisers and help them drive repeat business by choosing the right strategy.

Related: 4 Ways AI Is Revolutionizing Targeted Advertising And How to Balance Its Ethical Implications

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Tech Giants Are Leading the Charge in AI Advertising Campaigns, But Here's How Startups Can Still Compete - Entrepreneur

Recently, Intel, AMD, Samsung, LG Innotek, and SKCs US subsidiary Absolics have all highly focused on glass substrate technology for advanced packaging. Due to its excellent performance, glass substrate technology has become a rising star in the field of advanced packaging.

In September 2023, Intel announced the so-called next-generation advanced packaging glass substrate technology, claiming it could revolutionize the entire chip packaging field. Glass substrate refers to the replacement of organic materials in organic packaging with glass, rather than replacing the entire substrate. Therefore, Intel will not mount chips on pure glass; instead, the core material of the substrate will be made of glass.

Intel stated that glass substrates could lay the foundation for achieving an astounding one trillion transistors on a single package within the next decade. Based on its promising prospect, rumors surface recently that Intel plans to mass-produce glass substrates as early as 2026. Intel has invested approximately a decade in glass substrate technology and currently has a fully integrated glass research line in Arizona, USA. The company stated that the production line costs over USD 1 billion and requires collaboration with equipment and material partners to establish a complete ecosystem. Currently, only a few companies in the industry can afford such an investment, and Intel seems to be the only company so far to successfully develop glass substrate.

Apart from Intel, SKCs US subsidiary Absolics, AMD, and Samsung also see the broad development prospect of glass substrate.

In 2022, SKCs US subsidiary Absolics invested around KRW 300 billion to establish the first factory dedicated to producing glass substrate in Covington, Georgia, USA. Recently, the company announced that the factory has been completed and has begun mass production of prototype products. Industry analysts believe this marks a critical moment for the global glass substrate market.

Samsung has formed an alliance composed of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Electronics, and Samsung Display to develop glass substrate, aiming to start large-scale mass production in 2026 and commercialize the technology faster than Intel. Its reported that Samsung Electro-Mechanics plans to install all necessary equipment on a pilot production line by September this year and commence operations in the fourth quarter.

AMD plans to launch glass substrate between 2025 and 2026 and to collaborate with global component companies to maintain its leading position. According to Korean media reports, AMD is conducting performance evaluation tests on glass substrate samples from several major global semiconductor substrate companies, intending to introduce this advanced substrate technology into semiconductor manufacturing.

Currently, with the emergence of new companies like SCHMID and the participation of laser equipment suppliers, display manufacturers, and chemical suppliers, the industry is gradually forming some new supply chains around glass core substrate, and create a diversified ecosystem.

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(Photo credit: Intel)

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[News] Glass Substrate Mass Production is Nearing, with Tech Giants Leading the Way - TrendForce

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United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe

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Wyoming Divided Over Tech Giants New Projects: Jobs vs. Concerns - Wyoming Tribune

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UN US Tech Giants Combatting Synthetic Drugs - Galveston County Daily News

Get ready, Y2K nostalgists: ByteDance may be getting into the music player business.

The main question, however, is why even bother?

Last week, Music Business Worldwide came across a U.S. patent for a Method and Device for Music Play by TikTok parent company ByteDance, filed last December. The 20-page application shows diagrams of a device described as a target application for playing music, with a similar control layout and display to TikTok and the budding TikTok Music platform.

For Millennials and older Gen Zers, this gadget may sound a lot like an iPod Touch one of the final iterations of Apples pioneering music player but one that will presumably support TikTok Music and include some interactive bells and whistles.

There are features such as a sleep timer, a Music for Children option and an Exciting mode that will [represent] music content in a way more than sound, via vibrations and flashing lights triggered to a given song.

That all sounds well and good, but precedent is decidedly not on ByteDances side if its truly taking the hardware plunge.

There is already a landfill of devices dumped by software companies that very publicly botched the jump to hardware. Spotify is the latest to join the club, as it prepares to end support for the Car Thing, the creatively named Spotify-only audio player for your car. The Thing was both made publicly available and discontinued in 2022, but any existing units out in the world will now be rendered useless on Dec. 9 of this year.

Several factors arguably led to Car Things demise, including the companys official explanation of "streamlining our product offerings and that the Thing was scarcely marketed and required a paid Spotify account to use.

But chief among them was simply a lack of need: Most cars produced in the last several years already support Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which let drivers use Spotify as well as numerous other phone apps. Older cars might have benefited from the Car Thing, but, even then, there are plenty of aftermarket interfaces that offer more features than just using Spotify.

The Car Thing succumbed to a fatal flaw of any dedicated music-playing device, even the mighty iPod: Today, most people just listen to music through their phone.

A lack of reason to exist has been the kiss of death for countless tech companies attempting to build the next great doohickie. The Microsoft Zune was too late in a post-iPod world to make an impact, while Google Glass price was too high for doing everything a phone could do, just pretentiously.

Or take the brief trend of mobile devices tied to an online platform, such as the Twitter Peek, Amazon Fire Phone or three separate models by Facebook and HTC. Why does it matter if your phone has a built-in Facebook button when the free Facebook app exists for all phones?

But for ByteDance, a potential route to success may come down to framing. After the first generation of the Snap Spectacles were marketed as chunky, adorkable smart glasses for hipsters and subsequently underperformed, the company transformed its Spectacles 3 into a sleek (and pricier) high-fashion statement.

Meta pulled a similar move with its Ray-Bans-backed Smart Glasses. Embracing the status-symbol aspect of this tech rather than the mass-market ideals and world-disrupting dogma of Silicon Valley has worked out for Meta and Snap for now, at least so maybe thats the winning play for ByteDance as well.

And if you squint hard enough, you can perhaps discern the logic for a ByteDance music player, as 2000s nostalgia is white hot among TikToks mostly Gen Z audience, so a modern take on a quintessential Y2K item could be a winner. Theres also the appeal of having entertainment that doesnt rely on staring at a screen, especially for young kids.

Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chans Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in fact, recently invested 18 million (roughly $23 million USD) into the startup Yoto, which produces screenless audio players for kids. ByteDance might be picking up a similar wavelength given that it specifically included a Music for Children feature in the patent.

Its worth noting that the China-based ByteDance has filed over 9,000 patents globally as of 2023. Bloomberg Law reports that around 900 of those patents are in the U.S. alone, therefore unclear if this audio player patent is high priority or just to prevent someone else from filing first.

At any rate, bringing the device to market may be a long and bumpy ride, since TikTok Music is only in a handful of countries. Getting that platform to U.S. consumers may also be a sensitive subject considering TikTok and Universal Music Group recently settled their various disagreements.

Still, considering the ByteDance patent comes just a few years after TikToks own patent for a portable wireless computing device that could download digital music content, a future with TikTok hardware is a real possibility.

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Why Is ByteDance Considering a Move That Burned So Many Tech Giants? - Variety

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UN US Tech Giants Combatting Synthetic Drugs - The Daily Reflector